Impact of fungicides against false smut disease of rice caused by Ustilaginoidea virens

An on farm trial (OFT) was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of organic fungicides against false smut disease in rice. The trial was laid out in Randomised Block Design (RBD) with 3 treatments and replicated eight times. Three different treatments consist of T₁ COC 50% WP @ 0.3 %, T₂ Bordeaux mixture @1% and T₀ Farmer’s practice. The sprays were given in three stages of rice growing period during booting, 50% panicle emergence and 100% panicle emergence. The rice variety RCM-13 was used. The results showed that three sprays of Copper oxychloride (COC) 50% WP (T₁) and Bordeaux mixture (BM) 1% (T₂) significantly reduced the percent infected grain and disease severity against the farmer’s practice (T₀). T₁ and T₂ were significantly effective in percent reduction of disease severity over control resulting 86.57% and 77.78% respectively during kharif 2020. Similarly during kharif 2021 both the T₁ and T₂ treatments significantly reduced the percent disease severity over control (86.81% and 77.28%) respectively. Therefore, result obtained in the yield recorded 66.0 q/ha, 59.1 q/ha in T₁ and T₂ against the farmer’s practice (T₀) 52.11 q/ha respectively. The highest percent increase over control was recorded in T₁ (21.97%) followed by T₂ (9.22%).